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Ford Takes Another Step in Electric-Car Plans

By Jim Motavalli October 13, 2009 1:18 pmOctober 13, 2009 1:18 pm

Nancy Gioia of Ford.

As she moves laterally into a new post as Ford’s director of global electrification, Nancy L. Gioia sees a bright future for the triumvirate of hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery-electric cars. In fact, by 2020 she said that 10 percent to 25 percent of new car sales will be in one of those categories. And she sees some creative solutions ahead for the thorny question of electric-vehicle charging.

Ms. Gioia’s former role was directing sustainable mobility and hybrid vehicles in North America, so now she’ll have basically the same role on a global scale. Ford’s electrification plans for the United States and Canada are, in any case, deeply intertwined with the company’s foreign operations. The Transit Connect, scheduled to be on the road in a battery version next year, is based on a Ford of Europe commercial van that went on sale in the United States last summer. Its battery version is being built in a partnership with Smith Electric Vehicles, a British company with an American division.

Both battery vehicles, Transit and Focus, will be based on Ford’s “C” platform, as is the seven-passenger Focus-based C-Max, due here in 2011. Ms. Gioia predicted first-model-year volumes of 1,000 or fewer for the electric Transit and 5,000 to 10,000 for the Focus. “There are early adopters willing to pay quite a bit more than they will ever get back,” she said. “But there are only a small number of them. As battery costs go down and there is greater use and awareness of electric cars, we will be able to target a good-sized market.”

Ms. Gioia was asked if electric-car charging in parking lots could eventually be seen as enough of a business advantage (in potentially extending shopping time) that, as some have posited, big-box retailers and others might offer it free to their customers.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that,” Ms. Gioia said. “It could be a service for preferred customers that includes parking near the store. There could be a variety of interesting experiments that favor battery vehicles, including quiet zones and CO2-free areas.”

Ms. Gioia also said that Ford could conceivably build a plug-in hybrid version of the Transit Connect as one of the “top hats” on the C platform. “It does not require a big stretch of the imagination,” she said. Bright Automotive, based in Indiana, is pursuing just such a plug-in hybrid commercial vehicle, largely for fleet use.

Ford is testing Escape-based plug-in hybrids with a range of utility partners and is planning to introduce a production plug-in hybrid in 2012. It is also plans to start a partnership next year with university and utility partners to test a fleet of 15 Focus E.V.s in England as part of the British government’s “Ultra-Low Carbon Vehicles” initiative.

@Zach: There’s nothing green about releasing new technology before it’s proven and without a charging infrastructure in place. It’s not entirely Ford’s fault that America has had a counterproductive tax-structure for decades that has hindered this kind of innovation. In any case Ford has been the most-green of all the American auto makers… Google: “River Rouge plant McDonough.”

Revolutionary innovations for hybrid and electric cars will be found in the article: 5 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy. Read it on the Aesop Institute website: //www.aesopinstitute.org

These two pages outline little known breakthrough technology that opens paths to cars that need no fossil fuel or recharge.

Later, more advanced versions can turn cars into power plants, wirelessly able to sell power to the local utility when parked.

Imagine the impact of cars and trucks that can pay for themselves, and end the need to build coal or nuclear power plants!

Visualize electric cars that need no recharge! Also, hybrids with engines that need only one gallon of water as fuel every 1,000 miles. As impossible as it sounds, these technologies are now on the horizon.

Rowan University recently published results of experiments that can only be explained by a new source of energy. Other laboratories can readily reproduce them.

Skeptics should see that these experiments are reproduced rapidly, so that they may form their own conclusions.

These technologies hold promise of generating millions of green jobs across the planet. They will restore automobile manufacturing everywhere.

They will also change much of what is now believed about energy.

The first auto manufacturer to evaluate and adopt breakthrough technologies could conceivably leave competitors in the dust, until they too are driven to employ dramatically new alternatives.

@Zach: Ford is likely still losing money on every hybrid they make, or at least breaking even. Their volume of 25K per platform gives them predictable losses, which are pretty important during this period of meltdown.

If you have a cheaper battery, I’d suggest you show Ford. Otherwise, recognize the business realities of the technology.

Over the summer i read that a hybrid prius has the same environmental footprint of a hummer h3(the smallest hummer) when you factor in the production of the battery and the overall life cycle of the car.

If this is true and you guys let me know if im wrong. Then are best alternative is high mpg 4 cylinder vehicles.

Hydrogen/Electric hybrid are the most sustainable. Don’t worry about the Carbon foot print. These kind of theory is created by oil loobies and don’t be fool to fall in their trap.
When production increases it will be more affordable, just like LCD TV.

If depletion is your concern then you are right. But if you are worried about climate change then the pollution that comes out of a battery is much much more then the pollution from an energy efficient gas vehicle.

And as for hydrogen the energy it takes to create this fuel is so intensive that you have to put more energy in to the creation of hyrdogen then you get out.

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